The REA Story

Prior to 2000 I was a web developer for a local lender. I had been in that position with that company for three years, but as web services became more automated and many inexpensive tools became available, my services were no longer necessary. In January, 2000 I was released from employment due to “cutbacks in the IT departments”. This was nothing new. The entire tech industry was going through a bust and there were three times as many tech people as there were jobs.

My step-mother had been the senior vice-president of that company and had previously left to open her own business as a broker-owner. After many months she convinced me that I should come to work for her. She would train me as an originator and I would manager her small network in my spare time.

Soon I was originating loans. I enjoyed structuring the loans and even working with my clients, but one thing I could not stand was “prospecting”. My company provided me with 3 telemarketed leads per day, but even those I did not like to call since many weren’t really interested in loans, but were harassed for their information by the telemarketer. I didn’t like meeting groups of strangers or walking into realtor offices. In short, I was a tech person in a field that required a people-person to succeed.

I wasn’t ready to give up though. I figured that if I could find a way to get customers to call me, instead of me calling them, I would have something.

Well, that turned out to be easier said than done and by December of 2002, I was about to throw in the towel. I was surviving, but not really getting ahead. I had left my step-mother’s company to work on my own from home for Carteret Mortgage Corp. I was in the middle of the greatest refi boom in history and figured it was just a matter of time before rates went up and I would be broke.

Then one day I was browsing online and I saw this neat little concept. Business card CDs. As a tech person, I really liked that idea, but then what would you put on it? I toyed around with several ideas and finally settled on a collection of mortgage tools and tips that a customer could use.

The first run of these was really awkward. I simply put the stuff together and the user had to browse the CD and click on each item they wanted. As I toyed with it though, I thought of building what was essentially a website on a disk. By April, 2003 the Real Estate Assistant was born.

I started by simply burning a few CDs and putting up flyers in laundrymats and grocery store bulletin boards. (I still do this!) Shortly thereafter I started getting just a few calls here and there. What I found interesting was that even several months later, I would get calls from people who had my software! There were even people who would call to ask questions that had received their software from a friend or family member (since it is designed to be copied and people are allowed to do so). It wasn’t making me rich, but it was definitely making enough of a difference for me to stay in the business.

By October, 2003 people in my company had started to notice what I was doing. A few LOs had even spoken with customers and found out that they had received the software from me and had given them a copy. I started getting occasional emails from people asking me to make them a copy.

Rather than go through all of the trouble of building a website, I decided to simply list it on ebay. I really didn’t plan to go into the software business. The software sold rather well and I found myself spending a good deal of time answering the same questions over and over again. Also, each time I sold something on ebay, They took out additional fees. One of the most common questions was “why don’t you have a website” which was a perfectly decent question considering that I was selling a product that was written in HTML, the programming language for websites.

So in December, I decided that I needed to put up a website. Unfortunately, I was in the process of relocating my home and office to Princeton, IN from Evansville, IN. I had a house I needed to sell and the house I purchased needed many repairs. My solution was to take a website I had designed for someone else several years ago and modify it quickly to fit my needs. I put the website up in January, the same month I moved, and singularityproducts.com was born.

In March of this year I made the decision to do this full time. This meant that I had to revise the pricing, the website, and still manage to keep selling software. I put up a message board for purchasers to share ideas on the use of the software. I am currently in the process of re-building the website properly.

singularityproducts.com is located in Princeton, IN and now employs four people.